


yet one gets up

by gandrshot



Series: a fever dream [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Courier is Lone Wanderer | Lone Wanderer is Courier, Enclave, Gen, Primm (Fallout), rated for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 02:02:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14606769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gandrshot/pseuds/gandrshot
Summary: Shooting that eyebot down was the biggest mistake she'd made all week. How so was yet to be seen.





	yet one gets up

**Author's Note:**

> updated 3/19/19 to fix formatting issues, but nothing else was changed.

**July 9th, 2281.**

 

The bone-rattling _bang_ of a .308 sniper rifle shook the Mojave as it rang out. The eyebot it collided with only stuttered, skidding across the pavement, before regaining its composure and continuing along. Cosima swore, lined her sights back up, and tried again. Guess she forgot how fast those little bastards moved.

     The next shot hit dead on - she _knew_ it did - but even as it careened out of control, the eyebot persisted nevertheless. Son of a _bitch_.

     By now it was barely more than a speck in the distance, even on her scope. Two shots was a waste of ammo enough - not like money was much of an object for her, but .308s were expensive, assuming she could find them at all.

     But it was _Enclave._ She thought she was done with them - thought they all ran out East with their tails between their legs, thought she'd finished systematically purging them all from the Wasteland like the cancer they were. She would have _thought_ the NCR were better than this, leaving remnants lying around unchecked. Guess she was wrong.

     Steeling herself, she took another deep breath, set her sights, waited for the crosshairs to line back up...

_Bang._

     The eyebot didn't get back up this time.

     She watched for a few long seconds through her scope, making sure, but it was _down._

     Quickly, Cosima scurried to her feet, grabbed her bag from the ground beside her, and began to move, skidding down the ridge she'd perched herself on. No desire to stay in one place any longer, lest something less desirable come crawling curiously after her gunshots.

     She really needed to look at getting that silencer.

 

* * *

 

**October 23rd, 2281.**

 

In the Mojave Express office, Cosima had been loathe to find a beaten, battered eyebot, several distinct bullet holes from a .308 caliber gun. She was so used to eyebots self-destructing when they took enough damage, she never thought she'd be staring down at her own handiwork like this, let alone _here,_ in Primm of all places, when all she wanted to do was inquire about the job she failed.

     "What's with the busted robot in the office?" She'd asked Johnson once she found him in the Vikki and Vance. Primm was a town all hells of torn up right now, in a state she'd never seen it before - seems like a lot happened since she took a bullet to the skull.

     "Oh, that ol' thing? A courier dropped it off a few months back. I got it up and running for a little while, but whoever shot it down shot it good. Wouldn't stay up more than a few minutes. I was hoping to use it for some courier work, but that ain't gonna happen from the looks of it."

     "Do you mind if I take a look at it?" She'd feel much more comfortable if she could get a look at the programming herself before letting Nash turn it loose on the world; Cosima was no robot technician by trade, but she’d worked on her fair share back in the day, and if she could just be sure that the eyebot wasn't going to start spewing propaganda or funnel its observations back to some sequestered Enclave base, then maybe it didn't have to be destroyed for good after all.

     "If you think you can fix it, be my guest. Hell, you get it workin', why don't you take it with you? Not like we'll be getting work up here any time soon, these damn Powder Gangers swarming the place."

     "We'll see," she replied, in a tone of voice that just screamed _let's not get ahead of ourselves here._

     When the Powder Gangers were handled, evening sun setting on the far quieter town, she finally got the chance to settle in on that eyebot. The damage wasn't so bad, once she really got her hands on it. The main processors were left mostly intact - it was the power supply that took the most damage, the propulsion system plenty battered as well. All it took was a fresh new fission battery, parts from scrap electronics, and some sheets of metal to fix up the damage she'd done to the casing to get it up and running. When it whirred to life, finding a comfortable place in the air above her, beeping as it registered its new surroundings and situation, she leaned back, frowning up at it. She wondered how much it remembered about being shot down.

     "Access memory banks."

     A few beeps and whirs, that she'd think were almost frustrated if she didn't know better, as the bot responded in binary - _Access denied._

     It was a language she was rusty in years later, especially after years on the road, but she'd pulled apart more than a few eyebots back with the Brotherhood, learned their language, studied them intimately. This one shouldn't be any different.

     "4f 76 65 72 72 69 64 65 20 33 32." An old hexadecimal override most RobCo bots still took. Good thing the Enclave didn't think to write it out of their eyebots' programming.

     A few more beeps - _Access granted_ \- and it rattled off a few log titles.

     "Access first log."

     The speakers crackled to life. _"Subject E; diagnosis complete. Begin recording. My name is Whitley."_

     The audio log was enlightening, if nothing else. This was a bot years, maybe decades, old, sent west by the Enclave towards a base she knew didn't exist anymore. Who had stopped in Chicago years before she scrubbed it clean of their presence. It might have even been sent on its journey before she was even born, let alone out of the vault and on her conquest against them. She wondered if this Dr. Whitley was still around when she destroyed Adams Air Force Base. A fleeting thought, though - one she tried not to dwell on.

     "Access second log."

_"Download complete. Begin recording. Navarro outpost scientists: I am glad that ED-E has reached you..."_

     She snorted. _Not quite, Whitley._

     Whatever was in those databanks, it sounded valuable. Sounded like the kind of thing lots of people would be itching to get their hands on - that they hadn't, suggested that no one knew about it. It definitely needed to stay that way.

     It took her a moment to think, snapping her fingers as she tried hard to recall the right commands and codes, years old in her head but still floating around somewhere. From somewhere behind the desk she found an old scrap of paper and a dull pencil, scratched out some code, tried to remember all the right conversions in all the different languages of it she knew.

     "Terminate primary objective, override code 45 64 65 6e. Encrypt databanks, set password to... 83 107 70 78 82 86 77."

     It whirred for a moment, like it was thinking, and then, a few short beeps in confirmation. That should be enough to make sure Nash could use it without any headache. One day inevitably some knowledgeable soul would come along, know what this "ED-E" was, maybe shoot it down like she did, or try to dig around in its databanks. But Enclave encryption was _tough,_ and without her password - itself behind several ciphers of code - good fucking luck getting to it. At the very least, no one could use the Enclave's work to hurt anyone innocent ever again. As long as they couldn't get ahold of it, anyways.

     "Diagnose internal positioning hardware status."

 _Non-functional._ Good.

     "Diagnose long-range radio receiver status."

_Offline._

     So even if Enclave started searching for their missing ED-E unit, it was unlikely they'd find him unless they were in the Mojave itself. As far as she was aware, they weren't - and if they reared their ugly head, they wouldn't be for long.

     "Engage companion protocol for Johnson Nash. Engage standby mode."

     It trilled with confirmation, sounding halfway delighted, and Cosima caught herself smiling for the briefest of seconds before she stuffed any brief blossoming affection right the hell back down. _No. It's a machine. It's_ **_Enclave._ ** _It doesn't feel shit and you shouldn't either._

     Satisfied her work was done, Cosima stood, stretched, and gathered her tools back into her bag before heading for the door. Nash would be more than delighted to find it up and working again, and even if he wasn't expecting any work coming soon with all the Powder Gangers running around, the town was safe for now. Not what she came down here for, but she didn't mind helping out. Maybe once she got back on the road, she'd look at that sheriff up in the prison to come down and bring law to the people here. For now, though, it was back to Goodsprings. She'd been gone long enough, and walking back in the dark wasn't exactly her idea of a fun Sunday afternoon, so the quicker she could get out of here the better.

     She stopped short when the door didn't close behind her, but thumped against something hard and metal.

     Whipping around, she caught ED-E following her out the door, reeling a little as it collided with the thing. Cosima scowled.

     "No, go back inside! What did I say?"

 _Engage companion protocol,_ it trilled, self-satisfied, like it was _so_ proud of itself for knowing how to do that.

     "Engage companion protocol _for Johnson Nash,_ I said."

_Engage companion protocol?_

_"No!"_

     It beeped sadly. It shouldn't be _able_ to conceptualize things like being sad, or proud of itself, but it _was._ Whoever programmed this thing gave it _emotions,_ even if superficial and nothing beyond code. Whoever programmed this thing was an _asshole._

     "Just- go back inside."

     She kept moving, tried to leave the bot behind, but it trilled out another question and she stopped.

     " _No,_ you can't come with me!"

     Another sad series of beeps. Cosima stormed over to the door, opened it up, and pointed inside with the kind of fury of a woman at the end of her rope. "Get _in_ there. _Engage standby protocol._ "

     For as much as ED-E seemed to have a personality of its own, there just wasn't room for violating direct orders in its protocol. Even if it seemed to pick and choose what it _wanted_ to hear if she wasn't clear enough. Without another word - or beep, as it were - the eyebot floated, almost sulkingly, back into the Mojave Express, almost like a scolded child trudging to its room.

     Cosima quickly slammed the door shut, and all but ran out of the town, not looking back once till she hit Goodsprings.

 

* * *

 

**October 28th, 2081**

 

"Your friend's been waiting for you."

     The last thing Cosima expected, walking back into the Mojave Express days later, was to be greeted by that damn eyebot, whirring up to her and nudging her face like an excited puppy. Hesitantly she gave it a few pats - if only to placate it, she told herself.

     "Has it just been here the whole time?"

     "Sure has. I don't speak binary so well, but it sounded like you told him to wait here?"

     "I told it to go to _you,_ " she grumbled, just beneath her breath completely and thoroughly defeated by this thing. She _could_ go to the trouble of running the right commands and passing ownership off to Nash - and she _should_ , she told herself. This was _Enclave tech._ She used to experiment on things like this in the Brotherhood. She shot it down herself, like she had dozens before! But this Duraframe model was something else entirely. Rationally she knew it was nothing but code, strings of numbers behind its "personality," but... where her head went one way, her heart went another.

     "You sure you won't need him? Because if you think you have work for him, I can always hand him over..." _When did_ it _become_ him?

     "Nah, I've got plenty of flesh and blood walking the desert for me. And most of them don't get shot in the head, anyhow. Besides, he breaks down again and I wouldn't know what to do with him, 'sides scrap him for parts. Sounds like you know your way around a robot better than I do, and it sounds like you should have someone watching your back anyhow."

     Maybe he had a point. Still, her brain screamed at her to find an excuse to leave ED-E behind, like the rest of the Enclave she _thought_ she'd left in the East.

     Instead, she said, "alright, I'll take him."

     The eyebot whirred with delight, circling her only till she caught it in one hand and whispered, _"hey, stop that."_

     "Anyways, you need any more work, I should have something for you soon now that Meyers' is takin' over."

     "Thanks," Cosima replied, pushing the door open for ED-E, "but I still have a contract to complete."

**Author's Note:**

> two notes - since it's never really explained in canon _why_ the Courier can understand ED-E (specifically in Lonesome Road) outside of just... passing an intelligence check, i denoted it as binary. because that's what makes the most sense to me, and ED-E's beeping reminds me the most of Star Wars droids.  
>  also, ED-E in the Divide reminds me a lot of BB-8 so that's what informs my characterization of him the most, and if you picked that up while you read, that's why.


End file.
